Never Come Fetch Me

This experimental short provides a moving account of a young boy’s life on the mean streets of Cape Town’s ganglands, where he quickly progresses from selling drugs to getting involved in gangsterism, before being shot in the foot and sent to a home for ‘rude children’, where he suffers further trauma and violence. Narrated by a 15-year-old ex-gang member, the film’s striking visual poetry extends the language of the documentary form while providing a compelling and engaging intimacy that never succumbs to sentiment. With its idiosyncratic and authentically felt vision, Never Come Fetch Me suggests a bright future for emerging filmmaker Jessie Ayles.